I have always wanted to try making an apple cake, and I love apple crumble – so what could be better than an apple crumble cake? I made this last night using the recipe from the Hummingbird Bakery Cake Days book. They call it an apple streusel cake but it’s the same thing, yeah?!

Ingredients:

For The Sponge:

60g unsalted butter

140g plain flour

100g caster sugar

1 large egg

1/2 tsp vanilla extract

80ml milk

3 apples (I used 2 large Pink Lady apples)

For The Topping:

70g plain flour

1/2 tsp cinnamon

40g unsalted butter

70g soft light brown sugar

Method:

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees C. Grease a 8 inch tin.

Make the topping first. Rub the butter into the flour and cinnamon until it resembles breadcrumbs. Stir in the sugar and set aside.

For the sponge, cream together the butter & sugar until light & fluffy. Add the egg and vanilla and mix thoroughly.

Sift the flour, baking powder and a sprinkle of salt together, then add half of this mixture to the creamed butter & sugar, followed by half the milk. Mix well, then repeat with the rest of the flour and milk. Pour the batter into the cake tin.

Peel, core & slice the apples into quarters and each quarter into 3 or 4 slices. Arrange the slices in concentric circles on top of the cake batter, then sprinkle with the streusel topping, making sure it forms an even layer.

Bake in the oven for 35-45 minutes until it is golden brown and a skewer inserted into the cake comes out clean.

Yum.com! We had it when it was still warm drowned in double cream and ice cream (I can eat whatever I want at the weekends haha!). My only complaint was that the apples were still a tiny bit crunchy – but I probably didn’t cut them thinly enough!

I am submitting this recipe to The Pink Whisk Challenge for October. The brief this month was simply to bake something with apples! If you want to join in you have until the 28th October to enter. There is a fab prize up for grabs as well..

PS – I was taking some photos today in daylight of the cake & couldn’t resist having a little nibble slice! It was yummy cold as well

Today I went on a sewing course and made a lovely cushion! I had never even touched a sewing machine before so I was pretty clueless. Luckily I had a great teacher! I heard from Sarah about The Make & Do Studio in Stockton Heath, Warrington. They run a range of crafty courses – knitting, sewing, jewellery making, quilting etc.. I have wanted to learn to sew for ages so I was so excited to sign up for the Everything You Need To Know To Sew workshop!

The classes are kept pretty small but I had special 1 to 1 tuition today – talk about pressure haha!

My tutor, Maeri, talked me through everything – from where to buy fabric and supplies locally, to how to set up my sewing machine. Note, I didn’t have my own machine, but they are supplied on the day for you to use (as is all the fabric etc).

I practised my stitches on a scrap of fabric first and had a play about with all the different types and lengths of stitches. I had a bit of trouble controlling the speed of the machine with the foot pedal haha but that will come with practice. I also didn’t like having to reverse the machine to do the “stay-stitches” but I think I got the hang of it in the end!

I had cups of tea & lovely lemon drizzle cake to keep my energy levels up!

Making my first cushion was quite simple really – I measured, cut & ironed (!)* my fabric, pressed & pinned the sides, stitched my seams etc etc.. I had a bit of trouble keeping the seams straight, but I didn’t make a complete mess of it. I was left with a rather impressive cushion – yay! So pleased with it.

* The exclamation mark is because I never use an iron at home, so today was the most I have used one in years haha!

I always thought I was the most un-creative person ever, but I really loved my first experience of sewing and can’t wait to make more lovely cushions, and bags!! Sarah can sew stunning bags – see HERE, hopefully I will be able to make them too soon…

Oh – I also got to take a sewing machine home for a couple of weeks to practice on – how fab is that?! I am wanting Santa to bring me a machine for Christmas but if I had left it till then I probably would have forgotten a lot of things!

A big thank you to Maeri from The Make & Do Studio for a fab day. Most courses are about 3-4 hours long and there are day & night classes available. You can get 10% off your first class that you book online as well – if anyone lives near Warrington and is interested in crafty things I would really recommend the courses! You can see a complete list of the courses available HERE!

 

Yes, I am now officially a “chick with sticks”. In other words, I have decided to start knitting! After a visit to the fabulous Black Sheep Craft Barn yesterday I am now prepared with some lovely chunky wool & my needles to make a winter scarf. I did fancy making a red one but there was no nice red wool, and I fell in love with this teal colour!

I haven’t knitted anything since I was about 8 so I will keep you all posted with my progress! Has anyone any knitting tips for me..?! x PS – The picture makes the wool seem really blue, but it is more greeny-blue in real life!

I’m sure any pet owners out there will have heard about the Furminator! If not, it is meant to be the best grooming tool for cats & dogs and is guaranteed to reduce shedding better than any other comb or brush! It is a fine rake-like comb which gently removes the undercoat from the pet and any loose fluff or fur. Absolutely fab if you have a shedding monster in the house!

We tried out our comb on Chester yesterday. Springer spaniels don’t shed a great deal and don’t need a lot of grooming but I was amazed at how much fur came out of him. We will definitely be using our Furminator every week to keep on top of it! The comb is actually really gentle and Chester quite enjoyed getting Furminated lol.. . Oh, it’s really good to tease out tangles underneath their big floppy ears as well.

“Did all this fur come out of me?!!”

That’s a lot of fur to come out of a springer!

Well, the point of this post is that we bought a HUGE amount of Furminators from a website that was closing down. We need to get rid of them!

The RRP of a medium sized Furminator is around £34, and for a large one it is around £41! Madness. I know they are good, but I would never pay over £30 for a comb lol..!

We are selling them for £9.99 for a medium sized Furminator, and £12.99 for a large sized Furminator (plus £1.99 1st class P&P to the UK).

The medium sized Furminator would be suitable for cats and for small-medium sized dogs. We use a medium one for our springers. The medium comb is 2.65 inches wide.

The large size is suitable for large dogs or horses and is 4 inches wide.

They can both be used on short or long haired pets!

If you would like to order a Furminator for your pet(s) please send me an email: nicola (at) nicsnotebook (dot) com stating what size you would like and the address you want it posted to. We can post outside of the UK but obviously the P&P will be higher.

We will then send you a PayPal invoice for the correct amount, and once it is paid – we will post the Furminator first class. Note you don’t need a PayPal account – you can pay via debit/credit card securely via the PayPal site as well!

Here is Chester looking all nice & silky after getting Furminated. He also has kennel cough at the minute (no idea where he picked that up) from so he’s feeling a bit sorry for himself…awwwww!

PS – It was so funny trying to take these pics – Chester kept trying to eat his fluff!!!

PPS – You should see how much fur comes out of our cats! I will post a pic of our cat Jinx once he has been Furminated!

Don’t know what the Bake It! Club is?! Read all about it HERE!

This month’s challenge was not for everyone to try the same recipe (as happened previously). Amy gave us the theme of “Back to School” and we had to either think of our own recipe or we could use hers which was jam roly poly.

Having never had a school dinner in my life, I wasn’t sure what to make. I love crumbles, and I’m pretty sure they may have been served in the school canteen?! Along with some congealed custard of course!

We went blackberry picking on one of our dog walks and just about gathered enough blackberries to make into an apple & blackberry crumble:

Excuse the really bad photos, I must work out the best setting to use my camera on when the dark nights come around!

I love a good thick crumble topping! We had a tiny bit of ice-cream each to go with this (all that was left) but we really needed a lot more, or cream, or custard…..

PS – Note, this was made 2 weeks ago, before I started by healthy eating…. it is making me rather hungry typing this haha! x

 

This is actually a proper WIAW (ie what I ate on a Wednesday!). Here is yesterday’s feast (ahem!).

I made green juice for the first time, and it was rather nice! It had romaine lettuce, spinach, lemon and an apple in it and it was rather refreshing!

At lunch time I was really hungry, but just had no inspiration what to eat (apart from a chip butty!) so I ended up having raw carrot and pepper with hummus:

Afternoon snacks were a nakd gingerbread bar (my favourite so far!) and a handful of almonds:

I really enjoyed my dinner of spinach, quinoa, onion, pepper, brocolli, grated carrot and an avocado chopped on the top. V tasty:

However, half way through dog class in the evening I started getting bad stomach pains – I think the avocado wasn’t quite ripe enough to eat… I was OK once I got home and lay down.

That was my first day of eating all raw food (apart from the quinoa). I’m not sure I could do it everyday..

I have just finished reading “The Raw Food Detox Diet“. I enjoyed it and it re-inforced the reasons why I want to try and eat more raw foods but I found the recipe ideas a bit rubbish. I’m still massively lacking inspiration for raw, veggie meals…. I never was a big fan of salad lol.. Oh, and I’m dying for a cupcake………………………… xx

 

Isn’t she gorgeous!? Did you all think she was our new addition?! Unfortunately not. She is our friends’ new puppy and is called Millie. They only got her home yesterday, so of course we were straight over to visit!

Meeting Holly & Chester!

Chester has a closer sniff!

How cute?!

Gary & I wanted to take her home with us and we are broody for another puppy now! It just reminded us how small & cute Chester & Holly were once!